Watching a Blue Triceratops

Triceratops – Wild Watchers

Recently introduced into the Everything Dinosaur, extensive range of prehistoric animal soft toys are four new soft toys, each one representing a different dinosaur. We think, that as they look so cute, that they resemble young animals (prior to distal growth), the big eyes and large heads giving these soft toys the appearance of baby dinosaurs. There is an Oviraptor (with glow in the dark eyes), a Diplodocus, a very cute Tyrannosaurus rex (if such a thing is possible) and a bright blue baby Triceratops.

Yes, bright blue and why not indeed. Nobody knows for sure what colour horned dinosaurs were so why not blue. There are a number of reptile genera which are coloured blue, many birds and reptiles are brightly coloured. Scientists are fairly confident that like birds and crocodiles the Dinosauria had colour vision and colour would have played an important role in their lives, if their extant relatives are anything to go by.

Wild Watchers Triceratops Soft Toy

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

This new dinosaur soft to is part of a range called “Wild Watchers”, to see these items and other dinosaur soft toys, click on the link reproduced here: Dinosaur Stuffed Animal Toys

It is also important to remember that the dinosaur clade first evolved in a world that was dominated by greens and browns, there were no bright, colourful flowering plants (Angiosperms), these did not evolve for around 100 million years after the first dinosaurs appeared. So being colourful against a backdrop of mainly greens and browns may have been useful when displaying to attract a mate for example.

In comparison to reptiles and Aves (birds) our own Order (Mammalia) are surprisingly colour shy – we of course have some remarkably colourful mammals, for example the Okapi and let us not forget the stark contrast of a herd of zebras but the team members at Everything Dinosaur could not think of a single type of mammal that was coloured predominantly green. Indeed, the colour blue itself is very rare in the mammalian colour scheme, some primates, monkeys and such like have blue faces (and other parts) but we could not think of many more. Even Belgium blue cattle and the Blue Whale are not coloured exactly blue, not least from the pictures we could find that depicted these animals.